Record Store Day 2017: Numero Style

Posted on 2017-03-21

It’s that time of the year again. Wait, that’s exactly how we started this off last year. We’ve run out of ideas, folks. From here on out it’s going to be one rehash after another, as we trot out both tired tropes and borderline product in a vein attempt at maintaining RSD cred. We’ve tried to do interesting things in the past, be it WTNG or Los Alamos Grind! Our hope was that the average RSD chud-thumber might need a break from flipping past 311 triple 11” box sets, Feldman & Haim rap 12”s, and Mac Demarco reading fan tweets EPs. But it turns out that most people just want the same reheated garbage every year. You’ve been burned before with long lines and punishing prices, and if we get our way it’ll be more of the same, with hopefully longer lines and even higher prices. Who are we to argue with your terrible life choices?

But this is Numero, after all, and if we’re going to go big, we’re going to do it in a way that surely frustrates record buyers. In the past when we trotted out Hüsker Dü and Dinosaur Jr. sets, we pressed them in quantities that insured against the flipper economy. We wanted to make enough so that average fans who didn’t set up tents on the street the night before RSD would have a chance to buy our wares at an affordable price. Not this year. This year we’re pressing just enough copies to make you wonder if we actually pressed anything at all. The only way you’ll know for sure is if you come to one of our pop up stores (details below), pop a tent, or get a bowl of Pop Secret in your lap for the long, dark night of eBay refreshing for the soul.

Recorded in two hours as the cheapest studio in the phone book, White Zombie’s sophomore single Gods On Voodoo Moon is back in print on 45 for the first time since bassist Sean Yseult hand-photocopied 300 copies at the Parsons campus print shop in 1985. Limited to 2000 copies on Zombie Blood, Zombie Puss, or Zombie Black colored vinyl.

What does teen spirit smell like, anyway? It might smell something like Noise Addict. Like the real life stars of some sort of choose-your-own-adventure book about pursuing rock stardom, few bands ever led a more charmed existence, springing from the Sydney suburb of Bondi into seemingly overnight international fame as friends and collaborators of Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and the Beastie Boys. Through a combination of relentless drive, luck, and an admirable lack of self-doubt, Noise Addict spanned puberty to surpass the haters and join Radio Birdman and Nick Cave as a strange but permanent piece of Australian punk history.

Compiled here are 25 tracks, including their Evan Dando-worshipping satire “I Wish I Was Him,” the Thurston Moore produced demo, choice cuts from their Grand Royal-issued EP and LP, and covers of “Let’s Lynch The Landlord” and “Back In Your Life.” The entire sordid adolescent tale is covered in incredible detail inside the black and white 16 page zine. And finally, for the first time in the history of record pressing, and for no good reason at all, the cover for 10,000 Kids With Guitars doubles as a working chalkboard. Limited to 2000 copies on black vinyl.

There are hundreds of bootlegs out there to sate the ravenous soulero set, and so often they incorporate songs in the vast Numero catalog. Rather than beat them, Numero joins them with our answer to the iconic East Side Story series. Eschewing our classic look and standard-bearing copious notes for sardonic artwork and impeccable selections, Numbero is proud to present a ‘bootleg’ you can be proud of (because it’s all licensed). This time we’ve set our sights on the most unique of soul cultures: the irreplicable melting pot of San Antonio. Included here are all songs never before issued other than in minuscule pressings on 45, never distributed outside of Bexar County limits.

The Southwest Side Story rolas are obscure everywhere in the United States while eliciting intense nostalgia on the South and West Sides of San Antonio to this day. This could be a greatest hits of DJs like Henry Pena, who began his rein in the ’60s and continues it today with many of these same selections. Including such local luminaries as the Royal Jesters, Sonny Ace, the Dreamliners, Al Castana, Dino Bazan & the Dell Tones, George Jay & the Rockin’ Ravens, the Eptones, the Volumes, and Henry Pena, who never fully disappeared from view in the Alamo City. This nicely supplements our other San Antonio collections without redundancy. Limited to 2000 copies on black vinyl.

Numero Group Pop Up Stores: Chicago & Atlanta

With the Factory Outlet tour and Record Store Day overlapping, we decided to set up not one, but two stores on April 22nd 2017. As has been our habit for the last four years in Chicago, we’re setting up in Logan Square’s Comfort Station from 10-5PM. In addition to an assortment of trusted dealers shucking used 45s and LPs, we’ll have every in-print Numero LP, CD, 45, and whatever other miscellaneous debris we can find on hand at the lowest prices we can afford to sell them at. And, as has been a staple of our sales, we’ll be unloading hundreds of LPs with dinged corners at prices just barely above cost. Condition freaks need not browse these bins, but those looking to round out their Numero collection on the cheap should be sure to bring ample time and cash.

In Atlanta we’ll be doing something much more absurd. Sure, we’ll have all the exclusive items, the dinged stock, and yeah, even a limited-to-200 replica of Sonia Ross’s brilliant Tragar 45 “Every Now And Then” b/w “Let Me Be Free.” But when our art director Henry Owings got involved, we all wanted to crank it up a notch. With the help of our pals at Pabst, we’ve rented a 350 gallon dunk tank. Yes, for the low cost of $1 you will have the chance to dunk a wide array of Atlanta’s most reviled sociopaths, plus Numero founders Ken Shipley and Rob Sevier. All to benefit Camp Olio, an East Atlanta nature-based after school program, because we’re such nice people, and also because the world loves to bring a person down a peg by dunking them in a bath of dirty, lukewarm water.